Anybody else see Ciel as Superman??

And, I wonder if Lillian is a person isekaied into the story?

last edited at Sep 2, 2023 9:41PM

The intrusive thoughts won, gg. I'm up 2 hours past my normal bed time waiting for the chapter to drop so I can post this garbage I came up with while proofreading.

I might be losing it but, to me those picture book illustrations seemed to be right out of Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Edit: Also I kind of wish Lilian would have seen that Evris was happy with another woman and lamented that it could have been her, if she had played her cards right and not been a total jackass. Or at least regretted being stuck with a dumbass guy she doesn't like. Grrrr I hate lesbian characters that steel their crushes boyfriends! It just seems like such an obvious losing gambit, no matter what their reasoning behind it is.

last edited at Sep 8, 2023 1:21AM

I feel like that took a pretty stupid turn, but it worked out in the end? Ish?
I still can't bring meself to like Lilian, but I guess she ain't all bad. Just dumb. And useless.
Thanks for the chapter!

I was totally expecting more of a... yandere murder situation or something. Like, they literally find her surrounded by the bodies of guards. They were really pushing that angle. But nope. Resolved easily.

Felt a little weirdly paced and telegraphed I guess??

This chapter felt extremely unsatisfying. A bunch of things got set up and just did not have a payoff.

1. Lillian casually demolishes the palace guards, and we get no hint as to how nor is anything made of it.
2. A pair of noble girls decided it would be a good idea to harass the crown prince's fiancé, at a party thrown by the royal family, in front of the entire royal family.
3. The plot, such as it was, was foiled immediately. Nothing seems
4. We met the king and queen. They had a partial line each and that was it. They had no reaction to any of the above.
5. Lilian went through all the effort to put on her yandere act and was satisfied by Ciel doing one thing at one party. She then immediately left.
6. Lilian is incredibly yandere for Evris, but decides not to pursue her in any way, and goes back to mark, even after realizing Evris can be perfectly happy with another woman.

For bonus points, no one seems to really care about how Evris feels about any of this.

I was totally expecting more of a... yandere murder situation or something. Like, they literally find her surrounded by the bodies of guards. They were really pushing that angle. But nope. Resolved easily.

Felt a little weirdly paced and telegraphed I guess??

That's because this chapter was more about speed running well known tropes or copping other manga, rather than actually doing any thing with the story beats they were setting up.

Well that was a quick resolution. I'm glad it didn't drag on

In addition to all of the above, stealing your friend's fiancee so she can be "rescued by a prince" is pretty obviously an idiotic plan unless you know for certain a prince will indeed rescue her, and I don't see how isn't that a longshot even in-universe unless Lillian did some masterminding we're not told about yet. I know you sometimes need to turn your brain off to enjoy things but I can't overlook how extremely nonsensical this chapter was :P

last edited at Sep 8, 2023 3:24AM

Aww, now I kind of wish for Lilian x Evris. But I really despite the "I'll sleep with my crush's crush" thingy (eventhough there aren't really any sleep mentioned, nor do we know if Evris actually ever have any real crush on Prince Mark).

sigh, that was a weird chapter in a few ways and didn't really do anything to advance the plot, it felt like. Did we learn anything about anyone but Lillian? Did either of the main characters change at all? Why can no one tell Ciel is a woman with those hips!?

... actually I wonder if everyone DOES know and just maintains the polite fiction out of courtesy?

All that said, thanks to the people working on this, you did good.

last edited at Sep 8, 2023 4:02AM

I swear, why are manga artists so terrible at having characters face consequences or even apologise. I cannot count the ammount of times ive seen ppl pull some insane shit and then just say "but i meant well" and every1 goes yea thats fair moving on. (shoutout to Whispering you a love song for peak levels of that shit). Like really you couldnt even make her friend fuckin apologize once for the shit shes put the mc through ??

I swear, why are manga artists so terrible at having characters face consequences or even apologise. I cannot count the ammount of times ive seen ppl pull some insane shit and then just say "but i meant well" and every1 goes yea thats fair moving on. (shoutout to Whispering you a love song for peak levels of that shit). Like really you couldnt even make her friend fuckin apologize once for the shit shes put the mc through ??

zzZZz ... oh, we're already done with this?

Can't say I find the quality of writing in this manga very convincing ^^;

i find funny how dynasty scans comments complain more about the plot that any other website XD

last edited at Sep 8, 2023 6:04AM

i find funny how dynasty scans comments complain more about the plot that any other website XD

It's just the universe balancing itself out, looking at sites like WebToon etc. people seem to fall over themselves to praise every amateurishly drawn, badly executed, meandering gay plot as if it is the greatest work of art ever produced, so to maintain balance in all things, Dynasty has to shit on many average and sometimes even perfectly good manga.

tbh, it's kinda boring.

I gotta agree with many of the other commenters here: this chapter just felt really off to me. Going back and re-reading the first chapter, Lillian wasn't as bad as I was remembering, but I was still having a hard time squaring away her thought process this chapter. Her whole "plan" just seems really half-baked and unnecessarily mean, and even if she wasn't some evil villain, Evris still assumed she had betrayed her, and that was pretty much completely glossed over?

I thought the initial premise was solid, and I like what they seem to be going for this chapter with the whole "Evris doesn't need saving, she needs support and someone who believes in her" theme. Plus I'm just generally a sucker for villainess tropes. But I'm still not really feeling this so far; hopefully it turns around.

Sleeping on it, I think the problem is a confluence of a few things:
1. Lillian stole her fiancé and turned the whole kingdom against her, effectively disgracing and exiling her. Without Ciel stepping in, Evie'd be up shit creek.
2. But wait, it turns out Lillian was her friend, so it was also a deep betrayal, too!
3. Oh, but she was doing it for Evie's sake... somehow?
4. Anyway, Ciel needs to do something big to prove herse- oh, maybe not.
5. Look, she's clearly in lesbians with Evie, but also still committed to the shitty Prince and won't be hanging around as a constant presence? What?

So a love-rival-who-isn't came-only-temporarily to end-but-not-really her friend-but-acually-crush-but-actually-actually-neither-because-betrayal's relationship.

It's hard to make it hang together, especially since it's only chapter 3 and plenty of other interesting threads have been left dangling in the wind.

Well, that took an unexpected turn. Went quite nicely in the end, though. ^_^

smh Lillian just needed to watch more Revolutionary Girl Utena

last edited at Sep 8, 2023 1:25PM

tbh i think it makes sense. If you love someone but dont communicate with them or anyone else on the plan you tend to focus on a very certain plan to do a thing you think is needed for theis happiness, which can end in huge problems for the person in question.

I still can't bring meself to like Lilian, but I guess she ain't all bad. Just dumb. And useless.

She's not dumb, exactly. She's quite smart. She just has really terrible instincts, which leads her to applying her smarts to doing really counterproductive things. I've known people like that.

I find it kind of funny that this is the chapter that caused a bunch of Dynasty commenters to turn on the manga when I think it's very much in line with chapter 1, which was also a relatively mediocre trope-fest that relied on the reader's knowledge of the villainess genre to paper over the rough edges. So far chapter 2 is the outlier, unfortunately (though of course with only three chapters there's still plenty of time for it to return to the quality of chapter 2).

To be fair, there are the bones of an interesting concept in this chapter, of Lillian being in love with Evris but so caught up in comphet that instead of helping Evris herself she arranges a scenario for Evris to be "rescued" by a prince who then proceeds to take care of her every need, only to learn not only that (a) there's more possibilities than compulsory heterosexuality but also (b) true love is between equals who help each other out. But it's an arc that really needed to take place over multiple chapters; in a normally paced story Lillian would be the antagonist of the entire first volume, not just this single chapter. Not sure what caused the decision to stuff it all in this chapter instead, but hopefully it means we'll get to explore the Evris/Ciel dynamic more in subsequent chapters, which is the biggest strength of the manga.

The intrusive thoughts won, gg. I'm up 2 hours past my normal bed time waiting for the chapter to drop so I can post this garbage I came up with while proofreading.

real shit posting dedication

last edited at Sep 8, 2023 2:43PM

I find it kind of funny that this is the chapter that caused a bunch of Dynasty commenters to turn on the manga when I think it's very much in line with chapter 1, which was also a relatively mediocre trope-fest that relied on the reader's knowledge of the villainess genre to paper over the rough edges. So far chapter 2 is the outlier, unfortunately (though of course with only three chapters there's still plenty of time for it to return to the quality of chapter 2).

I think, for me at least, part of the difference is that it was the first chapter. I can excuse a bit of brevity and overreliance on tropes, when setting the stage, if it helps an author get to the more interesting and unique bits more quickly, so they can focus on those. However, we're now seeing the payoff for some of that initial setup and they're treating it in the same way, so it's harder to say that this is just an introduction getting handwaved so they can get to the real story.